Since that statement, however, there’s been little disclosure on the affected masters. In fact, Grainge’s statement now looks like part of a continued effort to cover up the catastrophic damages.

Rosen unearthed the presence of an internal, confidential tracking effort called ‘Project Phoenix,’ one that quickly circulated in the days after the ’08 fire. That confidential effort was designed to catalog the losses and seek replacements or duplicates to destroyed versions.

“The names were gleaned from UMG’s own lists, assembled during the company’s ‘Project Phoenix’ recovery effort, a global search for replacement copies and duplicates of destroyed masters,” Rosen noted.

Artists were bucketed into an ‘A’ list and a ‘B’ list, based on their perceived importance. Rosen explains:

The article also interviews key artists whose masters were destroyed in the blaze.

That includes Bryan Adams, who says Universal Music Group was mysteriously unable to locate his collection of masters from his ultra-successful album, Reckless. Adams was attempting to compile a re-release with unreleased tracks and outtakes.

“I called every one, former A&M employees, directors, producers, photographers, production houses, editors, even assistants of producers at the time,” Adams relayed. “I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that I couldn’t find anything at Universal that had been published to do with my association with A&M records in the 1980s.”

Courtney Love, who is now part of a $100 million lawsuit filed on Friday against UMG, had extremely sharp words for the cover-up. “No one knows for sure yet, specifically what is gone from their estate, their catalog,” Love said. “But for once in a horrible way people believe me about the state of the music business which I would not wish on my worst enemy.

“Our culture has been devastated, meanwhile UMG is online with cookie recipes and pop as if nothing happened. It’s so horrible.”

Here’s a quick sampling of the artists listed on the Times’ expanded list of 700 artists: